Open Source DesignWe are a community of designers and developers aiming to push more open design processes and improve the user experience and interface design of open source software.
http://opensourcedesign.net/
Wed, 17 Jan 2018 16:15:33 +0000Wed, 17 Jan 2018 16:15:33 +0000Jekyll v3.6.2Open Source Design NYC 11-09 meetup Recap<h2 id="the-big-idea---designing-in-open-source">The Big Idea - designing in open source.</h2>
<p>Open source communities push collaboration, sharing and transparency throughout various industries. While design and creativity have never been more important, we often wonder where can designers who focus on open source projects share what they do, push their designs further and encourage other designers to join the community? Come to our meet up to learn more.</p>
<h2 id="who-are-we-and-where-did-we-contribute-last">Who are we and where did we contribute last?</h2>
<p>We are a collective of designers and design advocates who contribute to open source projects. Julien Deswaef, Jessica Klein and Dina Michl opened a chapter in NYC to meet regularly and grow the open source design community. In September, we held our first meeting to collaborate on defining what shape the meetups should take.</p>
<p><img src="/images/nyc_image3.jpg" alt="nycgroup" />
Top row: Julien Deswaef, Atul Varma, Dina Michl, Stephanie Daher
Bottom row: Erika Enlund, Jess Klein, Stacy Cheng
Not pictured: Stephanie Weber, Shandy Tsai, Tess (Thematizer)</p>
<h2 id="open-design-kit---presentation-by-jess-klein">Open Design Kit - Presentation by Jess Klein</h2>
<p><img src="/images/nyc_image1.gif" alt="nycgroup" /></p>
<p>Jess Klein presented <a href="http://opendesignkit.org/">Open Design Kit</a> at our meetup this November.</p>
<p>Teaching people how to integrate design into their workflows has been a secondary focus of <a href="http://jessklein.is/">Jess Klein’s</a> career. Her experience while working in the design community is nothing but interesting and diverse. Having led and contributed to many open source education and civic projects, she’s had to learn to work with her teams all over the world.</p>
<p>As any designer knows, beginning a new project often requires establishing a process and collaboration tools to ensure that development is a success for every member of the product team. Klein says that “understanding why we are doing a design phase on a project, what’s the value of design?” is often a central question to open projects.</p>
<p>Jess and team came up with several strategies to help people understand how to collaborate with designers or on design. This included taking advantage of many different types of tools, such as presentations, blog posts, and contracts. She encourages her teams to design openly and to address conversation expectations and contributions. Throughout her work, she began to use these tools to aid her design process and wanted to make them accessible to the design community.</p>
<p>The project was incubated with the design team at <a href="https://bocoup.com/">Bocoup</a> (where she was the Principal Designer), and since this Summer has been a completely community managed initiative. There are many active contributors (all who are mentioned by name in the <a href="https://github.com/open-design-kit/opendesignkit">Github README file</a>) to the project and she is inviting more community participation to generate a more accessible and inclusive resource.</p>
<p><img src="/images/nyc_image4.png" alt="nycgroup" />
So, why is another kit needed? Jess was quick to point out that there are many great and useful toolkits out in the ecosystem already. The reasons another kit is needed is that existing kits are: specific to studios and organizations, focus on co-located teams, challenging for clients and stakeholders to see themselves doing the method without buying into the whole philosophy and don’t often embrace the fact that there are many different ways to approach a problem space.</p>
<p>Several toolkits inspired the project including: designkit.org (IDEO field guide) Gov.uk - (design principles manual), 18F Method Cards. But none of the kits out there addressed her remote reality. Opendesignkit.org was written for different types of users, this allowed for a specific focus on the type of language used. It is currently being used by large and small sized organizations and many freelancers.</p>
<p>“It’s unique because it’s not associated with a specific organization, so teams can use the kit freely on projects and take ownership of the content and interpretation.”</p>
<p><img src="/images/nyc_image2.png" alt="nycgroup" />
The minimum loveable product was defined as a combination of creating a few methods and a process and then testing those on a few different projects.</p>
<p>The initial release of the Kit has focused on highlighting “remote - first” methods for collaboration. As can be seen in the Affinity Diagram method, the Kit is not prescriptive but shows how you might approach problem solving.</p>
<p><img src="/images/nyc_image5.png" alt="nycgroup" />
Synthesize information with the remote team friendly sorting exercise of Affinity Diagramming.</p>
<h2 id="usability-testing-takeaways">Usability Testing Takeaways</h2>
<p>Now that the Minimum Loveable Product has been out for a bit, several fixes and updates have been identified, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>focus on putting the process up front</li>
<li>Add CC licensed templates (design templates) to support the methods</li>
<li>Write guides on more complex topics that will combine many methods</li>
<li>Showcase what possibilities exist for Open Source tools (write up of tools)</li>
<li>Incorporate linked examples and case studies</li>
<li>Localization</li>
<li>Licensing - based on copyright</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="questions-suggestions-and-next-steps">Questions, Suggestions and Next Steps:</h2>
<p>After the talk, we discussed the need to establish consist of language in terms of jargon via a style guide. This will help to develop a universal language and practice of collaborating and problem solving.</p>
<p>We also talked about the urgent need to have a license for the Kit in general as it is what Julien Deswaef called a “contract with the contributor.”</p>
<p>Some suggestions were made by the meetup including optimizing the kit for low internet bandwidth - looking at a pattern, to have a low bandwidth option and focusing on how to make the Kit more including users with different capabilities.</p>
<p>To contribute to the project, join the #opendesignkit channel on the <a href="http://slack.opendesign.foundation/">Open Design Foundation Slack</a>, or check out the <a href="https://github.com/open-design-kit/opendesignkit">Github repository</a>.</p>
<p>Slides:</p>
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRLa8NmIL2nBtDBJpu3oud_zdEcZlrBIYVHrxrxP7bEEJWEPYM4jsP_WGKDvG788DbMcw6SU4f2MyCJ/embed?start=false&amp;loop=false&amp;delayms=3000" frameborder="0" width="960" height="569" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
<h2 id="next-meetup">Next meetup</h2>
<p>Our upcoming meetup will take place place in <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/ThoughtWorks,+Inc./@40.7446828,-73.9870632,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c259a7c4fab243:0x7a7b1b141a048edf!8m2!3d40.7446828!4d-73.9848745">ThoughtWorks offices</a>, 99 Madison Avenue on <strong>Thursday the 14th of December, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Date &amp; Location</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Date:</strong> Thurs, 14 Dec 2017</li>
<li><strong>Time:</strong> 6:00pm - 8.00pm (EDT)</li>
<li><strong>Where:</strong> Thoughtworks offices, New York</li>
<li><strong>What:</strong> Intersection between accessibility, inclusive design, and open source presented by <strong>Atul Varma</strong></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="a-little-bit-about-atul-varma">A little bit about <a href="https://twitter.com/toolness">Atul Varma</a>:</h2>
<p>Atul enjoys building bridges of understanding between humans and machines. He has written illuminating software that’s been used as the centerpiece of TED Talks, in maker events around the world, and by individuals who are just trying to have a less frustrating time using their computer. But his favorite moments are very personal: understanding where another person is coming from, constructing a metaphor they can relate to, and using it to explain technology in a way that liberates, excites, and empowers.</p>
<p>Please <strong>RSVP</strong> for the meetup at <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-source-design-nyc-tickets-39204607035">eventbrite</a></p>
Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/tools/design/meetups/2017/11/09/osd-nyc-meetup-Recap.html
http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/tools/design/meetups/2017/11/09/osd-nyc-meetup-Recap.htmlopen-sourcecommunitiescollaborationtoolsdesignmeetupsOpen source design first NYC meetup<p><strong>The Big Idea - designing in open source</strong>
Open source communities pushed collaboration, sharing and transparency (in regards to licensing and copyright) throughout various industries. While design and creativity have never been more important, we often wonder where can designers who focus on open source projects share what they do, push their designs further and encourage other designers to join the community? Enter the <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/events/2017/09/open-source-design-nyc">Open Source Design NYC Collective</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Who are we and where did we contribute last?</strong>
We are a collective of designers and design advocates who contribute to open source projects. Julien Deswaef, Jessica Klein and Dina Michl opened a chapter in NYC to meet regularly and grow the open source design community. In September, we held our first meeting to collaborate on defining what shape the meetups should take.</p>
<p><img src="/images/nycgroup.jpg" alt="nycgroup" />
Top row: Atul Varma, Julien Deswaef, Brian Carr, Dina Michl
Bottom row: Jess Klein, Dave Crossland
Not pictured: Dixie Ching</p>
<p><strong>Collaborative Mind-mapping and Affinity Diagramming</strong>
At the first meetup, we got to know one another through a series of design exercises (what else?!). Additionally, we needed to establish what our collective mission would be and how we might organize future get togethers. We asked the following questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>What kind of meetup excites you?</li>
<li>What excites you about open and open source design?</li>
<li>Sticky clustering</li>
<li>What common themes are emerging?</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="/images/cardsorting1.jpg" alt="sticyclustering" /> (/images/cardsorting2.jpg)
Sticky clustering happened!!</p>
<p><strong>Themes</strong></p>
<p><img src="/images/cardsorting3.jpg" alt="cardsorting" /></p>
<p>Through the <a href="http://opendesignkit.org/methods/affinity-diagram/">affinity diagramming</a> activity, we determined that there are about nine core themes that the group was interested in supporting through the meetup. These themes are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sharing</li>
<li>Education</li>
<li>Community</li>
<li>N00b Friendly</li>
<li>Social Atmosphere</li>
<li>Participatory</li>
<li>Accessibility</li>
<li>Multidisciplinary</li>
<li>Toolboxes and Workflow</li>
</ul>
<p>These themes will act as kind of our design values for developing out the concept for the meetup. Whatever shape the ultimate meetup takes, these themes will help us to frame future conversations around what success might look like for us.</p>
<p><strong>Break out groups:</strong>
The themes informed a deep conversation about our mission and how we were to organize future sessions so they would be a success. We wondered What kind of impact do we want to have 1 year from now?</p>
<p>It was clear that as a group we all wanted to focus on sharing and applying knowledge of design within open source parameters but also keep a broader context that would avoid us only focusing on open source tools. Design needs to be a priority for open source so we having peers share knowledge and tips will only support and spurn much needed design growth.
As a result, we decided that the meetups will have two core elements to them:</p>
<ul>
<li>Presentations - gathering of peers <strong>(using community to build design)</strong></li>
<li>Making - applying knowledge <strong>(using design to build community)</strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Share-out and Next Steps</strong> (identify guest speakers, etc)
Our upcoming meetup will take place place in <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/ThoughtWorks,+Inc./@40.7446828,-73.9870632,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c259a7c4fab243:0x7a7b1b141a048edf!8m2!3d40.7446828!4d-73.9848745">ThoughtWorks offices</a>, 99 Madison Avenue on <strong>Thursday the 9th of November, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Date &amp; Location</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Date:</strong> Thurs, 09 Nov 2017</li>
<li><strong>Time:</strong> 6:00pm - 8.00pm (EDT)</li>
<li><strong>Where:</strong> Thoughtworks offices, 15th Fl, New York</li>
<li><strong>What:</strong> Open Source Design Kit</li>
</ul>
<p>We will start to put some of this theory into action by attempting to run the meetup and iterate from there. Thank you for your interest and please stop by and say hello!</p>
<p>You can RSVP for the meetup at <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-source-design-meetup-tickets-39225344060?utm_source=eb_email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=new_event_email&amp;utm_term=viewmyevent_button">eventbrite</a></p>
Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/meetups/mind-mapping/2017/10/31/osd-nyc-first-meetup.html
http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/meetups/mind-mapping/2017/10/31/osd-nyc-first-meetup.htmlopen-sourcecommunitiescollaborationmeetupsmind-mappingOpen source design needs better collaboration tools<p>Despite the rising awareness and acceptance of UX design, in particular on the web, it has failed to gain much traction in open source software. If for argument’s sake, we take UX design to have started in 1995 when <a href="http://blog.invisionapp.com/a-brief-history-of-user-experience/">Don Norman started work for Apple as a “user experience architect”</a>, even though it has a longer history, then the fact that design has failed to make much impact in the open source world for over 20 years suggests that there are structural and systemic barriers that make design and open source development as compatible to each other as oil and water.</p>
<p>In this post, I will argue the need for better communication and collaboration platforms by looking at some of the fundamental characteristics of open source design and development and propose some starting points.</p>
<p>The goal of OSD is to improve the user experience of open source software. Because open source software development is distributed, certain critical infrastructure is necessary. I am talking about a way for designers to share and build upon ideas, interact, reach consensus and collaborate with other designers and all the other stakeholders involved in the creation of software.</p>
<p>You may think that we already have such tools. Just look at GitHub! But when we consider the target user and use case of such tools, it becomes clear that there are no complementary equivalents for designers. Even worse, there is no tool to bridge the gap between designers and developers. GitHub and the like cater exclusively to developers’ unique needs and abilities. In doing so, it excludes other stakeholders and becomes a developer silo. Design is not like this. It cannot exist in isolation. Design is about understanding, facilitation and collaboration between all the relevant stakeholders. This is why I consider collaboration tools to be so important to design. Surprisingly, the closed source world is not a great deal better off. The Atlassian and Google ecosystems are the best that I can think of, and these were not built as a platform for design.</p>
<p>A true collaboration platform for designers must, in some sense, bring in all stakeholders. This is where the very immature and untested idea for a collaborative design and development environment comes in. More details about this vision can be found on this <a href="http://slides.com/studiospring/dcd/">slide deck</a>.</p>
<p>Because of the nature of open source software, collaboration tools are even more critical and have different needs from commercial or closed source development:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>All the stakeholders are distributed.</strong> Not just users, but designers and developers. No one stakeholder may ever be in the same room as any other stakeholder! Online communication suddenly becomes far more complex and important.</li>
<li><strong>Anyone can contribute.</strong> This raises issues of quality and decision-making.</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s have a look at some other characteristics of open source software:</p>
<ul>
<li>Users are often developers or have high tech empathy.</li>
<li>The maintainer (often a “non-designer”, to put it delicately), is the decision-maker, gate keeper and arbiter of good design.</li>
</ul>
<p>This raises thought-provoking questions often overlooked in discussions about open source design: is design even needed in open source software? If the end user and creator are the same kind of person, then the design is already user-centric. And should design follow the same model as open source development, in which anyone can make a pull request? As we all know, on the internet, nobody knows that you are a dog! This can be a problem because design is harder to judge than code.</p>
<figure>
<a href="http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=174322&amp;picture=dog-using-laptop-computer"><img src="/images/articles/dog.png" /></a>
<figcaption>Photo credits: Derivative of photo by <a href="http://www.zazzle.com/roughcollie*">Karen Arnold.</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">Creative Commons Public Domain.</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In writing about the right tools for OSD, I am putting the cart before the horse. The systemic problems are too large a topic for this post, but they must be identified and addressed first. However, open source design is at such an embryonic stage that even something as fundamental as a dedicated area for discussion and idea exchange to bootstrap the movement does not exist. This is why I have tried to identify our immediate needs, so that a more suitable tool than GitHub Issues or StackExchange can be found.</p>
<p>The diagram below shows characteristics of different collaboration platforms used to develop open source software, depending on the user (developer or designer) and whether it is project specific or agnostic. There is currently no dedicated platform for designers to discuss open source design in general (box number 3), so I have merely exercised my imagination to describe its characteristics. Reddit has a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/">forum for open source</a>, and StackExchange has a <a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/">UX forum</a>, but I would argue the tone and nature of discussion is different from what we have and need here. Finally, the last box (5) is a totally different platform, which I described earlier as a collaborative design and development environment. This would be a platform that takes in to account the unique characteristics of open source software and ideally would be built from the ground up as a platform for design, for all stakeholders.</p>
<p><img src="/images/articles/osd_collaboration_tools.png" alt="Open source design and development collaboration platforms" /></p>
<p>The next steps are to:</p>
<ol>
<li>decide what kinds of discussion and collaboration OSD actually wants to support.</li>
<li>determine the requirements for those types of collaboration.</li>
<li>find the tools that best meet the above requirements.</li>
</ol>
<p>A platform for people to discuss open source design and development is admittedly a very niche area and the fact that no such platform exists may speak volumes. But it is better to fail in the attempt, than fail for lack of trying, and the fact that we have, in my opinion, outgrown GitHub Issues, is a promising sign. I hope this post makes our situation clearer and will stimulate further discussion and action.</p>
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/tools/design/2017/03/27/osd-needs-better-collaboration-tools.html
http://opensourcedesign.net/open-source/communities/collaboration/tools/design/2017/03/27/osd-needs-better-collaboration-tools.htmlopen-sourcecommunitiescollaborationtoolsdesignDesigners in Open Source: julia<h2 id="what-is-it-that-you-do">What is it that you do?</h2>
<p>I’m a designer and developer currently focused on app and product design.
I am trying to learn new tools and work with people all over the world, so I dedicate a lot of time to open source software.
I’m currently looking for a job designing and developing applications – even better if in open source :)</p>
<h2 id="what-projects-do-you-contribute-to">What projects do you contribute to?</h2>
<p>I’ve been contributing to <a href="https://github.com/maxogden/screencat">ScreenCat</a>, a Mac OS application for screensharing built using the electron framework so it’s all HTML, CSS, and JS!
I’ve been making some crop icons for <a href="https://openfarm.cc/en">openfarm</a>, helping with UI and UX for <a href="https://qtpass.org">QtPass</a>, a cross platform GUI for pass, the standard unix password manager, and finally, I’m a new member of <a href="http://hood.ie">Hoodie</a> a friendly, complete backend for front-end developers to build their apps on.</p>
<p><img src="/images/interviews/julia/screencat.png" alt="screencat" /></p>
<h2 id="why-do-you-work-on-open-source-projects">Why do you work on open source projects?</h2>
<p>I believe if people work together they can come up with valuable ideas that will help people solve problems or accomplish many different things.
I think diversity is very important and I appreciate learning from other backgrounds.
Open source often brings people from all over the world that care for different causes, and that’s very exciting to me.</p>
<h2 id="how-often-do-you-contribute-to-open-source">How often do you contribute to open source?</h2>
<p>Several hours a week, probably 20-30 a week.</p>
<h2 id="how-did-you-get-started-working-on-open-source">How did you get started working on open source?</h2>
<p>I started contributing to ScreenCat first, per a friend’s recommendation to start using my design skills to help projects and to get some experience under my belt.</p>
<h2 id="whats-one-of-the-hardest-things-about-working-on-open-source">What’s one of the hardest things about working on open source?</h2>
<p>Onboarding new users.
So many environments out there are very hard for me to understand at first with just following a guide, so I can imagine other fellows feel the same.
I come from a more design heavy background although I am familiar with programming but, as a designer, sometimes I need some hand holding to get things set up and going.</p>
<h2 id="whats-one-of-your-favorite-things-about-working-on-open-source">What’s one of your favorite things about working on open source?</h2>
<p>Meeting people from all over the world.</p>
<h2 id="whats-your-favorite-typeface-obvs">What’s your favorite typeface? (obvs)</h2>
<p>Can’t really choose one but Fira Sans is a pretty sweet open source face by Mozilla.</p>
<h2 id="whats-the-most-recent-design-book-youve-read">What’s the most recent design book you’ve read?</h2>
<p>Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products</p>
<h2 id="what-websites-do-you-go-to-for-inspiration">What websites do you go to for inspiration?</h2>
<p>I mostly find things on Twitter nowadays by following people in the design/tech field.</p>
<h2 id="what-are-the-biggest-differences-between-open-and-non-open-projects">What are the biggest differences between open and non-open projects?</h2>
<p>Open source serves a bigger purpose because it is made by everybody for everybody, and closed source have many restrictions on the use, modifications, and distribution of the software.</p>
<p><img src="/images/interviews/julia/foss-contributors-checklist-icons.png" alt="foss-contributors" /></p>
<h2 id="do-you-see-open-source-as-larger-cultural-movement-than-just-software">Do you see open source as larger cultural movement than just software?</h2>
<p>Definitely.
My idea of open source doesn’t just apply to software, it should be applied to working together to build anything that helps people, and that is open for everyone to contribute to.</p>
<h2 id="how-would-new-people-go-about-joining-your-project">How would new people go about joining your project?</h2>
<p>Ask questions.
It may look intimidating at first to be getting into GitHub and learning how to fork a repository or make a pull request.
I recommend talking to people through issues or if the project has an IRC or Slack channel to introduce yourself and show your interest in the project.
There aren’t many tools/workshops/guides out there, unfortunately, for designers who want to join open source, but hopefully we’ll be fixing that with Open Source Design.</p>
<h2 id="whats-your-design-process-how-do-you-contribute-to-your-open-source-projects">What’s your design process? How do you contribute to your open source projects?</h2>
<p>Usually I hop in conversation by joining issues on GitHub.
Or create my own issues suggesting new ideas.</p>
<h2 id="what-are-some-of-your-favorite-tools---open-or-not-open">What are some of your favorite tools - open or not-open?</h2>
<p>I really have been loving using Atom!
The community makes some of the awesomest themes I’ve ever seen for an editor before.
Of course the git integration is a great bonus.</p>
<p>Gimp is really great.
I believe it still needs a lot more design love in the terms of usability and experience but it’s very advanced and you can accomplish a lot with it.</p>
<p>Julia is on <a href="https://twitter.com/JulesSimplicio">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://github.com/jsimplicio">GitHub</a>.</p>
Tue, 22 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/design/open-source/designer/interview/2016/11/22/interview-with-julia.html
http://opensourcedesign.net/design/open-source/designer/interview/2016/11/22/interview-with-julia.htmldesignopen-sourcedesignerinterview5 Steps to Design a UX that People Love<h2 id="research-prototyping-and-testing-the-easy-way">Research, prototyping, and testing. The easy way.</h2>
<p><em>Presented to you by the co-founder of Loomio.</em></p>
<p>My brother <a href="https://medium.com/u/521536fcadc7">Matthew Bartlett</a> and I have been contributing design to the open source project <a href="http://loomio.org/">Loomio</a> for a while now.</p>
<p>In the past couple of weeks we’ve stumbled on a design process that is working really well for us.</p>
<h2 id="1-find-a-problem-worth-solving">1. Find a problem worth solving.</h2>
<p>Thinking in terms of <em>problems people have</em> or <em>jobs people want to do</em> is a great way to stay focussed on creating a useful user experience, rather than a whizz-bang cool feature that nobody wants.</p>
<p>For this example, we’re looking at redesigning the search experience for Loomio. The first step is to talk to people and ask what are you searching for?</p>
<p><img src="http://opensourcedesign.net/images/asking-loomio-community-about-search.png" alt="Matt uses Loomio to ask the community about search" /></p>
<h2 id="2-research-how-other-people-solve-it">2. Research how other people solve it.</h2>
<p>In some respects, all UX design is ‘open source’, even if the underlying code is hidden: if you can play with the software, you can learn how it works.</p>
<p>Here’s the result of a couple hours of research into how other popular apps handle search:
<img src="http://opensourcedesign.net/images/researching-how-apps-do-search.png" alt="L-R: Loomio, Facebook, Gmail, Inbox, Google, Trello" /></p>
<p>In this case, Matt created <a href="https://youtu.be/LtT0_zjNyAk">a little video</a> to distill what he learnt from the research, and share it with the rest of the team.</p>
<h2 id="3-make-an-interactive-prototype-based-on-what-youve-learnt">3. Make an interactive prototype based on what you’ve learnt.</h2>
<p>Looking at a single screen won’t tell you much — you need to consider the whole workflow in context: all the steps that the user goes through to complete the task. It’s called a workflow because it should flow.</p>
<p>We use Sketch for drawing mockups and InVision to stitch them together into interactive prototypes. (You can learn about how we use these tools in <a href="http://blog.loomio.org/2015/07/07/design-for-developers/">this talk I gave recently</a>.)</p>
<p>So for the Loomio Search example, Matt made <a href="https://youtu.be/4xhG_9BnNZQ">this video demonstrating</a> how the parts fit together.</p>
<p>Video is a good a way of sharing a workflow, but quick animated gifs are even better! With a tool like <a href="http://recordit.co/">RecordIt</a> you can record an interaction, and upload and share it in a few seconds, which makes it effortless to get feedback:</p>
<p><img src="http://opensourcedesign.net/images/search-demo.gif" alt="A Demo of Search" /></p>
<p>This gif took me about 20 seconds to record and share. Gifs are also awesome for help documentation, developer QA, and marketing, but that’s a whole other blog post :P</p>
<h2 id="4-test-learn-iterate-deploy-repeat">4. Test, learn, iterate, deploy, repeat.</h2>
<p>The next step is to test these prototypes with real humans. Testing can be super lightweight: you will learn a lot just by watching a friend or colleague try to interact with your prototype for a few seconds.</p>
<p>As soon as we’re confident we’ve got a design that is an incremental improvement on the existing UX, we get it built and into people’s hands as soon as possible: <em>You learn so much more from <strong>use</strong> than you do from <strong>opinions</strong>!</em></p>
<h2 id="5-its-all-about-love">5. It’s all about love!</h2>
<p>“Product design” is a process, it’s not a job that comes with a start and an end. It’s an ongoing relationship between the people building the thing, and the people using the thing. Like any other relationship, you need to pay attention to the details and communicate abundantly. Your job as a designer is to learn what makes your users happy, and what makes your devs happy.</p>
<p>It also helps if you can occasionally blow their minds with something they never asked for! ♥</p>
<hr />
<p>Originally written by <a href="https://medium.com/@richdecibels">Richard D. Barlett</a> on <a href="https://medium.com/open-source-design/open-source-design-just-steal-everything-5c44ca793721#.dwn7xt73a">Medium</a></p>
<p><em>I write about working together. Loomio cofounder (http://loomio.org). Enspiral member (http://enspiral.com).</em></p>
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/11/21/5-steps-to-design-a-ux-that-people-love
http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/11/21/5-steps-to-design-a-ux-that-people-lovedesignopen-sourceuxuser-experienceThis Month in Open Source Design - June (and some bits of July and May)<h1 id="in-irc">In IRC</h1>
<p>We talked about (or what some members of our community have been up to):</p>
<ul>
<li>Merging some repos together. Ultimately that didn’t get very far, but people have been more careful with creating new repos. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-05-18/?msg=39486383&amp;page=2">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Design of the main website for wireframews [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-05-18/?msg=39486383&amp;page=2">irc</a>].</li>
<li>The woes of doing design for open source developers [<a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/opensourcedesign.github.io/issues/18">irc</a>]</li>
<li>The woes of job titles and unicorns [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-05-23/?msg=39967391&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Onboarding in Slick [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-05-23/?msg=39984519&amp;page=2">irc</a>], and general conversations about Slick. There’s a lot of enthusiasm around it.</li>
<li>Offline-first apps and hoodie [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-05-25/?msg=40069142&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Talky [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-02/?msg=40760040&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Kosmos [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-08/?msg=41247099&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>The state of tutorials for design [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-08/?msg=41268491&amp;page=2">irc</a>]</li>
<li>We talked a whole lot about how democracy is hard [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-10/?msg=41469276&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Some more thoughts on IRC and chat programs [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-11/?msg=41584415&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Etherpad [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-11/?msg=41584415&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>A code of conduct [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-06-11/?msg=41584415&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>Funding open source [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-07-03/?msg=43599602&amp;page=1">irc</a>]</li>
<li>P2P file back up systems[<a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/events/design/hack/meeting/2015/02/01/opensourcedesign-fosdem.html">irc</a>]</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="on-github">On Github</h1>
<ul>
<li>Jan D. started a conversation about <a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/resources/issues/16">Free-as-in-freedom tools for Designer Dev communication and creation</a>. This resulted in a <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/23/text-based-tools-for-designers">blog post on it</a>.</li>
<li>We started <a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/opensourcedesign.github.io/issues/17">wireframing the website</a> with some concepts.</li>
<li>This led to a <a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/opensourcedesign.github.io/issues/18">conversation about logos</a>!</li>
<li>Our <a href="//opensourcedesign.net/code-of-conduct/">code of conduct</a> is up for discussion.</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="events">Events</h1>
<ul>
<li>We’re planning for <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/events/design/hack/meeting/2015/02/01/opensourcedesign-fosdem.html">FOSDEM 2016</a></li>
</ul>
<p><br />
<br /></p>
<p>NOTE: <em>26.3.2017</em>: Updated link to <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/23/text-based-tools-for-designers">post on tools for designers</a></p>
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/07/10/this-month-in-open-source-design
http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/07/10/this-month-in-open-source-designmonthly-updateWhy open source designers need tools beyond text and code<p>Text is the predominant means of creating and collaborating on software. Design is a visual and spacial activity. For those who design software and websites there is a non-visual world that needs to be navigated and taken into account: text in the form of program code and comments.</p>
<p>This has historical and technical reasons, beyond that computer programs are essentially created in code. But the text based tools and culture of creation and collaboration have severe drawbacks for designers who are part, or are striving to be part, of the creation of software. This is particulary relevant in the open source community, where many collaborators (among them potentially designers) work jointly to create and improve software.</p>
<h2 id="the-case-against-designing-in-code">The case against designing in code</h2>
<p>There is no shortage of pleas and instructions for designers to learn to code. I argue that for the sake of better design, it makes little sense to do this work in code (at least for most designers).</p>
<p>To use code as a tool for design, ideation, communication, and adjustments is a process that creates a lot of friction. It demands constant switching between the definition space – the code – and the outcome – the resulting appearance and structure.</p>
<p>Empirical research shows that feedback loops play a crucial role in creative tasks [1]. For designers this involves evaluating how a preliminary design looks, is structured, or behaves and then apply changes and see if the result is satisfying [2]. Look at sketching: You can quickly draw what a product or a website may look like. You evaluate what is good or bad about the drawing, think it through and iteratively make changes The feedback is instant: if you slip and the crooked line messes up the design you see it right away. If the slip actually adds something good, you see it too.</p>
<p>This instant feedback is what’s to lose if we always design in code.</p>
<p>But should designer ditch the resolution to learn to code? Not always. There are things that are best expressed in code: maybe a gesture or a new kind of menu. It will enable communicating your ideas to programmers and estimate the technical difficulties involved in implementation. But while design-in-code is touted to be <em>the</em> skill-to-learn for (web) designers it shouldn’t come with the loss of core thinking models and processes for many designers.</p>
<p>So rather than learning to code for designing, you may be better off keeping design a visual process and learn to program for communication and realization of the design.</p>
<h2 id="collaboration-text-based-tools-are-not-silver-bullets">Collaboration: Text based tools are not silver bullets</h2>
<p>There are many well established means to communicate in (Open Source) Software projects: Mailinglists, IRC, Bugtracker and Git, an immensely popular version control system. For all of these tools, but particularly with git, you will find many pleas online that designers use it for version control and collaboration. In addition, they argue, there is little choice anyway if one wants to contribute to an open source project.</p>
<p>But while tools like Git and IRC are well established, they pose some problems for in design. These tools are primarily text based and visual assets need to be somehow linked or embedded. They are not first class citizens.</p>
<p>Communicating about layouts, icons or workflows is possible, but tedious. Images often need to be uploaded and linked. When talking about them, images need to be referenced by some ad-hoc-system, parts of the image need to be described to refer to them. The text-space is a weak substitute for the visual space the design happens in. A long winded, cumbersome communication is the result and ambiguities arise (with often participants in the conversation scrolling up and down long threads to reference designs). This contributes to the lack of participation and acceptance of designers in open source projects and contributes to the view that designing together is hard and possibly done best by a lone genius.</p>
<p>To enable designers to contribute to open projects it is not enough that they learn about code and technology: they need tools that match their workflow and enable them to collaborate with programmers. Just telling them to adapt is not a viable, design-thinking, solution.</p>
<p><em>If you like to support the creation of libre tools for (open source) designers, have a look at <a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/resources/issues/16">some of our ideas</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>[1]</strong> Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation, Donald Schön, 1992</li>
<li><strong>[2]</strong> »sketching provides a temporary, external store for tentative ideas, and supports the ‘dialogue’ that the designer has between problem and solution.« (Chapter 1, ›Design Ability‹) »…Drawing…gives the flex­i­bil­ity to shift lev­els of de­tail in­stan­ta­neously; al­lows par­tial, dif­fer­ent views at dif­fer­ent lev­els of de­tail to be de­vel­oped side by side« (Chapter 4, ›How Designers Think‹) in Design Thinking – Understanding how designers think and work. Nigel Cross, 2011</li>
</ul>
Sat, 23 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/23/text-based-tools-for-designers
http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/23/text-based-tools-for-designersThis Month in Open Source Design<h1 id="in-irc">In IRC</h1>
<p>We talked about:</p>
<ul>
<li>the possibilities of support networks outside of unions for freelancers and designers within companies [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2015-03-31/?msg=35476059&amp;page=1">irc</a>].</li>
<li>restructuring the organization’s repository structure. There’s been some complaints from people interested in our project that they’re getting too many notifications if they don’t unwatch specific repositories. There’s also no clear “main”, “discussion”, or “meta” repository. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/35671041/">irc</a>], [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/36846008/">irc</a>].</li>
<li>IRC and open communication. We’ve started working on Slick, an open source IRC client that is meant to challenge Slack. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/36295623/">irc</a>], [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/36965248/">irc</a>], [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37593318/">irc</a>], [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37962924/">irc</a>], [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/38857846/">irc</a>].</li>
<li>private conversations and PGP [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37035720/">irc</a>].</li>
<li>discussed creating a task tracker within OpenHatch to track design jobs [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37600648/">irc</a>]. This is an <em>action item</em>.</li>
<li>transparency in Open Source projects, and how that can be used for showing how people contribute to projects, and seeing whether it can provide funding. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37874818/">irc</a>]. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/38791381/">irc</a>].</li>
<li>a mentorship program with funding made available to work with us on smaller projects, where more established members in the Open Source Design community would work alongside people who don’t usually have time to introduce them to the community, while using the funding to ensure that they can make the time. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/38794543/">irc</a>]</li>
<li>the scope of Open Source Design. [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/38943677/">irc</a>].</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="on-github">On Github</h1>
<ul>
<li>We launched <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/">the site</a> [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37529727/">irc</a>]!</li>
<li>Job postings are <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/jobs">now live</a>!</li>
<li>Events are <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/events">now live</a>!</li>
<li>Some of our members have started work on <a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/slick">Slick</a>, a theme for the Shout web app.</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="events">Events</h1>
<ul>
<li>We now have an <a href="http://opensourcedesign.net/events/">events page</a></li>
<li>We attended and presented at OpenTechSummit in Berlin [<a href="https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/msg/37270321/">irc</a>]. Jan Dittrich presented on the difficulties present when designing for open source projects. We also had a nice little meetup at OTS with some contributors on the project.</li>
<li>We were at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Toronto [<a href="http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/">link</a>]. Jan-Christoph Borchardt presented on Open Source Design and his experiences working on ownCloud. There was also a small workshop on design-reviews of each other’s projects.</li>
<li>We had one online/in-person meet-up where we finally launched our site [<a href="https://github.com/opensourcedesign/events/blob/gh-pages/2015-04-25-designs-and-hacks.md">link</a>].</li>
</ul>
Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/18/this-month-in-open-source-design
http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/05/18/this-month-in-open-source-designmonthly-updateWelcome to Open Source Design<p>Here should be our hello world blog post :)</p>
<p>Maybe links and stuff about involvement here…</p>
<p>Well, I guess the website was enough :P</p>
Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/04/25/welcome-to-open-source-design
http://opensourcedesign.net/2015/04/25/welcome-to-open-source-designdesignopensourcelaunching